WHY DO WE HURT THE ONES WE LOVE?

One of the most common problems in relationships is that we feel emotionally wounded by each other on a regular basis. You both love each other and want to stay together, yet you keep hurting each other through verbal abuse, physical rejection, taking each other for granted, betraying emotional trust, or by bringing up vulnerable topics from a partner’s past.

Why do we do behave like this?

We all experience various degrees of emotional hurt and trauma while growing up. Unfortunately, we have formed obsessions around whatever we experienced. We may feel revitalized living the same way we did as children and so we may do things unconsciously to get our partner to trigger those feelings. For example, a person who grew up with a lot of distance may feel uncomfortable with closeness and may damage it by picking fights or avoiding intimacy. A person who grew up in a disorganized, dramatic home may be uncomfortable with harmony and quiet and always seem to trigger confusion or drama in their relationships.

We all tend to try to find the love we never experienced as children.

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If we did not or cannot get that love from our original parent or caretaker, the next best thing is to get the love from someone who has a very similar personality to the person who originally wounded us. We generally feel a lot of attraction, chemistry and intensity in our love with such partners due to the interconnected nature of our emotional thoughts.

What we may not realize, though, is that once we get into a deeper, committed relationship, our fear often gets activated. When we become afraid, we will strike out in exactly the same way that our parents or caretakers did. Eventually we get wounded again. The amount of pain becomes worse after getting into a deeper, committed relationship because the very person we hoped could give us the love we never received, is now hurting us.